Blackberry Network Crashes. RIM Say “Make Backups”

Rim’s service crashed last night at around 8pm Eastern, failing to send email to users. Some reports on the Blackberry forums say that some customers are without web browsing, too.

RIM have put up a recorded message on their service hotline:

[We are] currently experiencing a service interruption that is causing delays in sending or receiving messages.

Watching the forums, it now seems that some users are coming back on line. Technicians at RIM have tried to reset the network but the huge backlog built up overnight is causing problems as the system comes back on line.

They advise users to make backups in case the same thing happens today. Ouch.

Bad news for Crackberry users. I’m trying not to imagine what would happen if the whole internet did this.

UPDATE: It looks like this is affecting the whole of North America and Canada. Also, NewsChannel 4 in New York are reporting that maybe the whole western hemisphere is down.

UPDATE 2: I have just checked in with friends in England and they are unaffected.